The 10 most-cited articles in Academy of Management Journal, 2023

Can artificial intelligence (AI) assist human employees in increasing employee creativity? Drawing on research on AI-human collaboration, job design, and employee creativity, we examine AI assistance in the form of a sequential division of labor within organizations: in a task, AI handles the initial portion which is well-codified and repetitive, and employees focus on the subsequent portion involving higher-level problem-solving. First, we provide causal evidence from a field experiment conducted at a telemarketing company. We find that AI assistance in generating sales leads, on average, increases employees’ creativity in answering customers’ questions during subsequent sales persuasion. Enhanced creativity leads to increased sales. However, this effect is much more pronounced for higher-skilled employees. Next, we conducted a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews with the employees. We found that AI assistance changes job design by intensifying employees’ interactions with more serious customers. This change enables higher-skilled employees to generate innovative…

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) refers to a class of machine learning technologies that have the capability to generate new content that resembles human-created output, such as images, text, audio, and videos.Within the context of generative AI, much hype has been directed in particular toward large language models, given the associated tools' ability to generate coherent and contextually relevant text given a user-defined prompt.As editors of a journal devoted to advancing knowledge production in the areas of management and organizations, we believe it is important to recognize the promise of generative AI for advancing such knowledge production.In particular, we see opportunities for scholars to increasingly make use of generative AI to assist with the entire value chain of knowledge production, from synthesis, to creation, to evaluation and translation (Bartunek, Rynes, & Daft, 2001;Kilduff, Mehra, & Dunn, 2011;Van De Ven & Johnson, 2006).Moreover, these same tools promise to increase both the efficiency and rigor of our research methods.Even as we recognize the promise…

As we are witnessing a fundamental transformation of organizations, societies, and economies through the rapid growth of data and development of digital technology (George, Osinga, Lavie, & Scott, 2016), artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform the management field.With the power to automatize, provide predictions of outcomes, and discover patterns in massive amounts of data (Iansiti & Lakhani, 2020), AI changes many aspects of contemporary organizing, including decision-making, problem-solving, and other processes (Bailey, Faraj, Hinds, Leonardi, & von Krogh, 2022).AI also enables firms with capabilities for offering new products and services, developing new business models, and connecting stakeholders.In line with these developments, AI is not only an interesting phenomenon to study in and around organizations (e.g., Krakowski, Luger, & Raisch, 2022;Tang et al., 2022;Tong, Jia, Luo, & Fang, 2021), but also offers management scholars a wealth of research opportunities in enlarging their methodological toolbox to leverage vast amounts and various types of data…

“Multimethod research”—defined as the use of more than one methodology in a single research project—offers a number of potential benefits. Indeed, the siren song of a multimethod approach seems to be growing ever stronger. The song promises numerous intuitively appealing strengths—for instance, the potential to generate and test theory in a single manuscript. Using multiple methods concurrently can also help researchers triangulate on the answer to their research question, enabling inferences that are high in both internal and external validity (Molina-Azorin, 2012). Moreover, multimethod designs can facilitate a more complete and accurate understanding of organizations, which are multidimensional and complex. Given no single research approach can tap into all of the various attributes of organizations, combining multiple approaches can enable important new insights (Daft & Lewin, 1990) that are both theoretically and practically valuable (Aguinis, Werner, Lanza Abbott, Angert, Park, & Kohlhausen, 2010).

One of the greatest challenges of multi-stakeholder partnerships lies in forging a shared understanding and obtaining and sustaining commitment among parties representing different interests and goals. While studies have emphasized the importance of developing shared frames for enabling collaboration and collective action through frame alignment, scant attention has been paid to how stakeholder representatives can attain commitment from their constituents “back home” to frames negotiated on their behalf. Our longitudinal process study explores how participants in the German Partnership for Sustainable Textiles successfully confronted the challenge of aligning frames across multiple interaction arenas, highlighting how failing to tackle this “two-table problem” can risk partnership collapse. Our process model captures how back-and-forth interactions enabled the stretching of shared frames across interaction arenas, thereby propelling the partnership from near collapse to deepened commitments. While stretching frames heightens the risk of frame break, our analysis shows how such…

Problemistic search literature has long sought to understand which responses firms adopt when addressing performance shortfalls. Studies have typically considered certain responses and focused on established decision rules to examine search directions, thereby, implicitly assuming that all responses considered are workable solutions to performance shortfalls. Conversely, we argue that variations in decision-makers’ beliefs about the effectiveness of particular responses in improving firm performance play an important role. These beliefs, alongside evidence supporting them, determine which specific responses firms adopt. To test this argument, we focus on two types of search solutions represented by research and development (R&D) intensity and philanthropic donation intensity. Based on 2009–2018 data collected from publicly listed Chinese firms, we find that, when decision-makers agree on the effectiveness of R&D, the positive relationship between performance shortfalls and R&D intensity strengthens; whereas when they agree on the effectiveness of corporate social responsibility…

Hybrid organizations must sustainably attend to multiple goals embedded in different institutional spheres. Past research has highlighted the value for hybrids in recruiting board members representing different logics to avoid attentional drifts; yet, diverse boards have also been prone to conflicts that occasion attentional lapses, thereby jeopardizing these organizations’ pursuit of multiple goals. We draw on a longitudinal comparative case study of five work integration social enterprises with institutionally diverse boards to uncover an integrative model of hybrid governance consisting of a protective board structure and relational leadership processes that, together, prevent distracting cognitive and emotional conflicts and foster attentional engagement of both the board and senior managers to multiple goals. The protective board structure prevents shifts in board composition and ensures the enshrined representation of the organization’s logics. Relational leadership processes—which help board members relate to each other, with the organization’s mission, and with senior…

Economic crises have profound effects on societies, motivating many individuals to launch their own firms in order to make a living. Although these firms created “out of necessity” possess few resources besides their founder’s human capital, the role that this critical endowment plays in establishing a successful firm during a crisis is unclear, as existing knowledge offers diverging predictions about the value of general and specific human capital. We argue that this debate remains unresolved because we lack a holistic understanding of how each human capital type influences performance when founding conditions vary, and aim to reconcile the contrasting claims by considering how “hard” a crisis hits a given industry. Analyzing data collected from 500 founders who created firms in Greece during the Great Recession, combined with data from the Greek Statistical Office, we find that general human capital provides the greatest benefits, on average, during a crisis; yet specific human capital is more valuable in both the most favorable and the most unfavorable industry contexts. These…

Research on entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs) has tended to focus on the role that characteristics internal to the EE play in determining EE-level outcomes. Notwithstanding the insights that academics, policy-makers, and entrepreneurs have gleaned from these studies, prior research has yet to explain whether, how, and why these outcomes might also be impacted by an EE’s position within the larger network of EEs. Given broad acceptance for the important role that networks play in facilitating entrepreneurship at the firm level, we contend that adopting a network-based view of EEs may also help predict and explain aggregate entrepreneurial outcomes at the EE level. Specifically, we adopt a double embeddedness lens to examine the impact of both inter-EE (i.e., structural embeddedness) and intra-EE (i.e., cultural embeddedness) factors on EE-level new venture creation. Using a longitudinal sample of regional data in the United States from 1994 to 2016, we develop and test hypotheses where the relationship between structural embeddedness and new venture creation follows an inverted “U”…

Using a grounded theory study of two prominent performing arts organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic, we develop theory about how organizations respond to adversity over time. Building on research on resilience, resourcefulness, and crisis management, we induce a process model that unpacks the mechanisms and dynamics that enable organizations to act resiliently. We find that organizations approach adversity using two types of resourcefulness. Promotive resourcefulness focuses on opportunities from adversity, which leads to acting resiliently. We show how promotive resourcefulness becomes sustained over time by endogenously producing resources—crisis agency, trust, and hopefulness—which expands an organization’s identity and leads to resilient acts. In contrast, preventative resourcefulness focuses on minimizing worst-case outcomes, which leads to a lost organizational identity and relatively weak adversity adjustment. We find that preventative resourcefulness becomes part of cycles that erode trust, limit crisis agency, and generate hopelessness. Additionally, we explain how…